Posts Tagged ‘Goodbye to All That’

Yesterday my beloved spouse and I left our progeny in the excellent care of their granddad and spent the day with friends in the country. It was so lovely — the smell of piney woods, mown grass, cedar trees; riding on ATVs; discovering a tiny fawn curled up at the base of a tree; hunting mosses and lichens; playing music; drinking wine at dusk; watching explosions of fireflies at dark.

“A Young Couple Catching Fireflies at Night”

(Not us! We were much more casually dressed …)

It was such a beautiful day — and exactly what we both needed: to get out of the city, to get away from the twins (in the nicest possible way), to spend time with each other and with good friends, to eat good food (including the pickled grapes I had made!), to have good conversation, and to have some adventures.

As we were walking at dusk, we talked a bit about city life vs. country living. Most of us had spent most of our adult lives in cities, including New York, which always feels to me like the citiest of cities. But here I have to pause at my own word choice: city life, country living. Is there a difference between life and living? Does the city have (more…)

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And by “Girls” I mean the HBO series written and directed by Lena Dunham.

I don’t get HBO — I don’t get cable at all — so I’ve only seen on episode, by chance, in a hotel room. My reaction was mixed. It was funny and painful and truthful and sad and ridiculous and unrealistic — all at the same time.

It’s a show about four girls living in New York — out of college and one of them newly out of money — her internship is unpaid and her parents have just cut her off financially and she only has four essays finished out of her nine-essay memoir which, she believes, will make her the voice of her generation. “Or at least, a generation… somewhere,” she fumbles. The girls mostly deal with boys — a too-good boyfriend who becomes a turn-off (because he’s too good) and a not-really-a-boyfriend who, despite all the sex that happens, never seems to turn his not-girlfriend on. There’s one amusingly meta moment when one character explains Sex in the City to another, and even assigns them combo-packs of Carrie/Samantha/Miranda personas* (one with “Charlotte” hair). (more…)

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A bit about me …

I'm Randon Billings Noble, an essayist and book reviewer, who is also the mother of now three-and-a-half year old twins. I don't post here as much as I used to, but you can read my published writing and hear my writing news by clicking the link immediately below (which will take you to my writing website, randonbillingsnoble.com). Thanks!

I’m thrilled to announce that my lyric essay chapbook Devotional is out from Red Bird Chapbooks! This brilliantly decorated star fold book opens to expose a simple beauty and the experience of longing in a series of personal devotions, its brevity and contemplative prose evocative of a medieval Book of Hours. Each section of Devotional calls […]

I’m pleased to announce that my author talk, “The Sparkling Future, the Eternal Present,” is up at Superstition Review’s blog. In it I read an excerpt from my essay “The Sparkling Future” and discuss the power of seduction, the price of betrayal, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, break-ups, beheadings, and what it’s like — as an essayist […]

It begins with a quote from the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet — “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.” — and continues in 69 short numbered sections. You can find it here: “69 […]

I’m pleased to announce that I have two “Required Reading” columns in Creative Nonfiction: “A Story We Tell Ourselves and Others,” a review essay, Required Reading, Creative Nonfiction (May 2016) Here’s an excerpt: It’s often said that no one really knows what goes on inside a marriage except for the people who are in it—and I would […]